Nielsen: 17% of GTA IV Purchasers Underage

The folks at Nielsen Games have released a new report on Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV, which looks at reasons for purchase, platform preference and perhaps most interestingly the ability for minors to get their hands on the controversial title. In fact, Nielsen found that 17 percent of respondents in their survey who had purchased GTA IV were between the ages of seven and 16.

"61% of these younger gamers indicated that they purchased the M-rated game themselves, with 39% of the young gamers responding that someone else bought the game for them," Nielsen said. "Interestingly enough, parents/guardians were pegged as the biggest facilitators for getting the controversial game into the hands of these young respondents, garnering 80% of the response. Friends, siblings and other relatives rounded out the other 20% of the response."

Despite these findings, earlier this spring the FTC released the results of its latest mystery shopper survey, which showed big improvements in game ratings retail enforcement, particularly at leading retailers like GameStop, Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

As the Nielsen report reveals, however, a good number of today’s youth are still obtaining M-rated titles because their parents are either not properly educated on ESRB ratings or are simply okay with their children playing these games designed for adults.

Elsewhere in the Nielsen report, the company found that Microsoft’s exclusive episodic GTA content (coming this fall) did have some sway on consumers, with 25 percent of those who purchased the Xbox 360 version of GTA IV citing the extra content as a deciding factor. 64 percent said they simply prefer the Xbox 360 over the PS3.